UN Recognition and Determination Always Arrives Late at the Party

I know you might find this a bit hard to believe but António Guterres, the UN secretary general, has just warned of rising seas that threaten almost a billion people to “a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale.”

Well my god, Tony, who knew?

Actually, everyone who has been paying the slightest attention to global climate changes over the past forty years knew. Really? I must have missed that. I was distracted lately by the news OF A McDonald’s new “Mr. Crispy” ad, welcoming a pizza to their burger menu, that gathered some flack from appearing too near a crematorium in Cornwall.

Quite fun, that.

And then there’s the ongoing tragedy of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, a bit of flack about some Chinese spy balloon over America and that dreadful, everlasting sort-of-almost-war in the Ukraine—a bit close to Russia, if I’m not wrong. Throw in a SuperBowl, a nationwide vigil every two or three days for mass shootings (this latest at Michigan State University, my alma mater). It’s been a hard time to concentrate.

With too much on my plate right now I nearly missed the UN bleating on about another existential crisis

It’s as if ‘existential’ was a totally newfound word. If it’s not the whales, it’s white leopards in some remote Asian mountain range. That’s all a lot to swallow while what’s left of America’s middle class faces a cutback at the office and everyone left is worried who’s going to be chopped next.

The way I see it, that’s existential.

But then the UN has always had rabbits in its pants regarding malfeasance outside its stately prominence on the Hudson River in mid-town Manhattan when what’s inside could use a bit of cleaning up. It keeps on growing like a cancer, struggling for relevence while the reality of its five-nation veto keeps any actual healing at bay.

But it does have a stunning view of the Statue of Liberty, I’ll give it that.

Protect Human Rights. Deliver Humanitarian Aid. Support Sustainable Development and Climate Action

Those are the Mission Statements of the UN and one can but wonder if those last two missions weren’t chalked on the board rather hastily. For sure, human rights are always a crowd-pleaser, unless we’re actually asked to actually do something about them. Myanmar and Iran are what’s known as look-the-other-way nations and, although we Americans love to point a jaded finger at China, it was not the Chinese who ran torture camps at Guantanamo and abu Ghraib.

As for humanitarian aid, I don’t see the UN in Turkey or Syria during the most deadly earthquake in recent memory. It takes a long time for the United Nations to gather itself together, decide what the hell to do and then not do it. Unfortunately, when a building falls on you and your family, time is of the essence.

On the other hand, the UN now recognizes that mankind is on its way to delivering the planet we inhabit into a new age of extinction, quite likely including our own species. It further takes into account that Russia is actively annihilating a sovereign Ukraine by rocketing its infrastructure and civilian population from bases inside Russia and outside Ukraine.

So, that leaves Sustainable Development and Climate Action as the last of the missions

I don’t know why sustainable development is even on the table, because taking world population from two to seven billion in a single lifetime (mine, as it happens) is pretty much the definition of unsustainability. Slice and dice it anyway you like, that number can’t be outrun. World population reached 500 million for the first time in 1471, hit one billion 333 years later in 1804 and two billion in 1927. You’d think someone would have noticed such a rapid acceleration, but here we are, 96 years later, crowding seven billion.

Okay, I fudged a bit, only 87 of those 96 years are mine, but close enough. Late to the party on sustainable development and no seats left at the table.

Finally (and wearily), that leaves the UN secretary general’s warning of rising seas

António Guterres is a lifelong socialist politician, former president of Portugal, recently turned bureaucrat. Secretary General of the UN is a pretty good gig, but he’s a bureaucrat none the less. A nice guy, no doubt loves dogs and children. I have a soft spot in my heart for socialists, more every day as the planet becomes less and less social.

I guess his warning was specifically made toward rising seas because it’s among the last climate degradations to befall us. All the rest were acknowledged decades late and those who might have changed our environmental course were aware of, but chose to turn away from, sounding the alarm as humanity ran pell-mell for the rabbit hole.

There’s no one to blame

That’s probably just as well. We humans have a collective consciousness, but it’s scattered. Volodymyr Zelenskyy needs artillery shells for Ukraine and Patrick Mahomes won the SuperBowl. I’m painting the bedroom tomorrow and elsewhere in the world some poor bastard is being hanged from the neck until dead.

Like so many other things, human life will go on until it doesn’t.